After my first Universalis game, I noticed a big artifact of the rules systems; the dice apocalypse.

Once I control a character in a conflict, it makes sense to spend boatloads of coins on them just before the conflict. If the character loses, I get 1 coin back for every coin I spent; if the character wins I expect to get 1.5 coins back for every coin I spend. For instance, if I spend 20 coins, my expected return is either 20 or 30, depending on winning or not. If there's another conflict in the scene, I can take those points and spend them winning that conflict. If the previous coins are applicable to this new conflict, then I'm rolling 50 (!) dice for this conflict. So, 20 coins becomes 30 coins becomes 75 coins (50*1.5). Guess what I can do in the next conflict?

Even better, somebody can spend 1 coin to take over the character, so now they are spending 1 coing to get back 75 or 75*1.5 = 112 coins.

I think this is a pretty serious flaw in the game. The game I played started out as a couple scenes of interesting character developement, then became a massive brawl as players figured this out. I don't see a good way of fixing the problem.

The winner has the option to buy off coins won by the losers, which can help hold down "speculative" entry into complications. In fact, I'm pondering a rules gimmick for next time I play to require that winners *must* buy off losers coins before they use them for anything else. See if inflation can be held down that way.

Well... you can't just buy dice for complications like that. Each die you buy has to represent something. When you buy dice, you don't just say "I'm buying 75 dice," you say "Inigo gets a die because the sun is in Roberts' face." <plink> "He gets another die because Roberts' is still winded from climbing the cliff." <plink>

If you can come up with 75 different situational modifiers for one roll without your butt being challenged off, then you deserve every die you get! :)

Don't forget about Challenges too...

I would Challenge someone putting down a bunch of Coins on an already established character...especially to increase skills/Traits for no reason, or add new skills that just happen to be helpful. Everything must be well explained to the satisfaction of all the players.

That said, I agree it could become a problem. I never quite saw the point of just buying a couple dice to add to a conflict (calling it "the slippery floor") when you could spend the same couple coins adding the Trait of Slippery Floor 2 to the ballroom. Of course you have to control the location to add the trait.

I would challenge the spending of coins won by the Challenge as well... and if, as the loser in a conflict, they didn't take my coins away... I would probably un-buy traits, or add "negative" traits to those involved. Things like cowardice, concussion, injuries, gullible...traits that can be called upon by an opposing side in future conflicts.

[edit: cross posted with Paganini :) ]

eef31415 wrote: After my first Universalis game, I noticed a big artifact of the rules systems; the dice apocalypse.

Once I control a character in a conflict, it makes sense to spend boatloads of coins on them just before the conflict. If the character loses, I get 1 coin back for every coin I spent; if the character wins I expect to get 1.5 coins back for every coin I spend. For instance, if I spend 20 coins, my expected return is either 20 or 30, depending on winning or not. If there's another conflict in the scene, I can take those points and spend them winning that conflict. If the previous coins are applicable to this new conflict, then I'm rolling 50 (!) dice for this conflict. So, 20 coins becomes 30 coins becomes 75 coins (50*1.5). Guess what I can do in the next conflict?

Even better, somebody can spend 1 coin to take over the character, so now they are spending 1 coing to get back 75 or 75*1.5 = 112 coins.

I think this is a pretty serious flaw in the game. The game I played started out as a couple scenes of interesting character developement, then became a massive brawl as players figured this out. I don't see a good way of fixing the problem.

Dough-head (me!) wrote:
We both have 20 coins.
I spend 1c to take control
I spend 15c making Bandit with 14 combat traits.
I spend 1c to say my Bandit attacks your character.
You interrupt, spending 1c to take control of the Bandit.

First, Tony is right that once a Complication has begun that control may not change. This is to prevent such situation s from getting very complicated potentially. However, if one felt that a "threat" was needed, one could rescind that rule with a Gimmick, and make it possible again.

The best solution, however, is Nathan's. Challenge the inclusion. As he points out, the Coins have to mean something. If a player does a cruddy job of describing their inclusion, if it's obvious that he's only doing it to accumulate more Coins, then Challenge it. Such a challenge says to the player that they have to earn their Coins, that they can't just exploit the rules to get more Coins. After all, what's he going to do with the now even larger pile of Coins? Likely, the player will just make similarly cruddy stuff. Use Challenges to make the game what you want.

But this is all sorta academic. It seems to me that there is some sort of interplayer competition going on here to see who can accumulate the largest pile of coins. If all the players agree that this is fine, then, the game will degerate into a series of Coin garnering Complications. Which is presumably what the players want. After all they are the ones who allowed it. Soon everyone will have piles ten feet high. Which is silly, given that you could just institute a Gimmick to give yourself a jillion Coins each.

Anyhow, what fun is that? I mean really. Now you have a jillion Coins; what do you do? Buy ever more powerful characters? To what end? How does that build a story?

Universalis is not a competition to get the most Coins. The Coins are a measure by which the group rewards itself for good play. The group as a whole must monitor the use of the rules. They cannot monitor themselves. As long as there is a consensus (or even just a majority, actually) that play is about using the Universalis rules to create a good story, there will be no problem.

Just my experience,
Mike

Mike wrote:
Universalis is not a competition to get the most Coins. The Coins are a measure by which the group rewards itself for good play. The group as a whole must monitor the use of the rules. They cannot monitor themselves. As long as there is a consensus (or even just a majority, actually) that play is about using the Universalis rules to create a good story, there will be no problem.

Just my experience,

I think the initial question of the thread has been addressed pretty thoroughly without me. Thanks all.

The three points that have been brought up that I really want to hammer home are these:

1) The Coin has to be justified. If you can come up with 74 interesting facts about your character that could be meaningfully applied to the situation at hand the moment before entering into a complication you're alot more creative than I am ;-)

2) If the justification you use isn't a good one (as judged by your fellow players, not me or the rules) you'll likely be challenged...especially if you try to side step point #1 by saying "amazing combat abilities x74"

3) Most subtly (and I'm so glad players are getting this because it isn't explicit in the rules) Nathan is quite right when he says that Coins have no intrinsic value. I've played games where 15-20 dice pools and characters with 30-40 Coins worth of traits were standard. I've played others where the dice pools never got above 6 and most characters had only 3-4 Traits defined. Very different volumes of Coins and dice being thrown around, but both worked equally well.

The way the economy is designed to work, inflation should largely wash itself out. If you spend alot of Coins to get alot of dice you should get alot of bonus Coins...which you'll need because eliminating a character bought with alot of Coins will be very expensive. Challenges have also shown to be an easy way to drain excess currency from the economy. If someone's inflating tactics are being seen as abusive...a Challenge will easily wipe out such ill gotten profits...If they're not seen as abusive, but are being enjoyed...than there is no foul. The only downside to inflation in that case is that record keeping and pool sizes can get cumbersome. But what's considered to be fun and what's considered to be cumbersome is one of the key factors each group must decide for itself.

If the natural economic forces of the game don't eliminate your worries about inflation, its easy to get a little more forceful with a simple rules gimmick. First: 1 Coin to buy the following Fact as a tenent of the game "abusive Coin inflation will not be tolerated". Second: 1 Coin to buy the following rules gimmick: "In any challenge the Challenger can call for a vote to determine if the player being challenged is abusively inflating the economy. If the majority of other players agree that he is, than the Challenger gets the benefit of Coin doubling for the "anti inflation Fact" being violated."

I HIGHLY doubt, such a heavy handed tactic would be necessary, however.

In my first game, we spent 23 of our starting Coins on setting creation (we were having too much fun) before we even went to bid for the first scene. Seeing our error, I proposed the one-time rules gimmick: "Before bidding for this first scene, everyone gets 10 coins from the bank." It worked fairly well to compensate for our newbie error.

If the book-keeping of huge numbers of coins becomes problematic, couldn't a one-time rules gimmick be the answer? "Everyone must pay the bank 20 Coins right now." I mean, if everyone is annoyed by the situation, and everyone's stockpile is reduced by the same amount, it shouldn't be a problem, right?

Just a thought.

Exactly right, in some games I know Mike has done the opposite when there were too few Coins to handle all of the cool stuff players wanted to do ("I propose everyone take 10 Coins").

Rules Gimmicks handle unique social contract needs just as easily as they handle custom game world design needs. Great example.